Perdaily.comtag:www.perdaily.com,2009-09-01://12019-02-19T09:38:57Zpublic. education. reform.Movable Type Pro 6.3.8COLLUSIVE SETTLEMENT OF LAUSD STRIKEtag:www.perdaily.com,2019://1.9842019-01-22T18:26:19Z2019-02-19T09:38:57ZThe collusive settlement of the UTLA-LAUSD strike just announced on the morning of January 22nd by LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, UTLA's President Alex Caputo-Pearl, and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti predictably fails to consider the real reasons for LAUSD's longstanding failure to educate its predominantly minority and still segregated student population in a district that remains more concerned with the profits of its corporate "agreed upon no-bid vendors," rather than spending money on the timely addressing of its students' subjective academic levels and needs.Leonard IsenbergThe collusive settlement of the UTLA-LAUSD strike just announced on the morning of January 22nd by LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, UTLA's President Alex Caputo-Pearl, and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti predictably fails to consider the real reasons for LAUSD's longstanding failure to educate its predominantly minority and still segregated student population in a district that remains more concerned with the profits of its corporate "agreed upon no-bid vendors," rather than spending money on the timely addressing of its students' subjective academic levels and needs.

Under this agreement, it seems LAUSD will continue to socially promote students by age without consideration of their individual subjective mastery of the prior grade-level standards that students actually need to assure their subsequent academic and career success. Even though so doing would logically be much cheaper than the present costly corporate run criminal incarceration system that now awaits and captures too many needlessly uneducated ex-LAUSD students, when they finish or drop out of school completely unprepared.

Under this agreement corporate vendors selling LAUSD goods and services at inflated prices far above fair market value will not only be able to continue robbing LAUSD of money for goods and services bought by LAUSD at inflated prices far above fair market value, but additional funds will also be sought by going against property tax limiting Proposition 13 with a new parcel tax to augment the funds available for these agreed upon corporate vendors to steal.

As I recently mentioned in an earlier article, class size reduction in and of itself, without linking it to also eliminating the continuing social promotion policy that this agreement completely fails to address, dooms the vast majority of LAUSD's predominantly African American and Latino student populations to continued and unnecessary failure, where their timely education and academic success would be far less expensive than the subsequent incarceration that now awaits and befalls wildly disproportionately number of these predominantly minority students.

The present cost per student of education was cited in the strike settlement announcement as $16,000 per year, which was seen as totally inadequate. But it would be interesting to know just how much of this money actually goes directly to things like hiring more teachers and how much goes to increasing the number of highly paid administrators or buying other things that in no way directly impacts whether a student gets the education they are entitled to.

And in an age of computers, why doesn't LAUSD own the copyright of all the educational materials that it uses, instead of them being owned by large corporate publishers that unnecessarily replace and recharge for them every few years at exorbitant and unnecessary and avoidable cost to LAUSD? Couldn't LAUSD teachers of various subjects write these materials and share the copyright with LAUSD, while augmenting their own compensation? What's to stop the writing and upgrading of subject matter texts in real time that would obviate the necessity of ever paying the obscene profits to corporate publishers for subsequent unnecessary editions?

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AT LAUSD THE PROBLEM IS NOT JUST CLASS SIZEtag:www.perdaily.com,2019://1.9832019-01-17T04:45:51Z2019-02-11T07:42:53ZWhile class sizes are too large at LAUSD, which is problematic to say the least, this is not what makes it impossible for teachers to be effective. Rather it is the fact that the vast majority of these students have been passed through their prior grade-levels- social promotion- without ever mastering the prior grade-level standards that would have allowed them to be effectively engaged by their teachers in subsequent grade-levels.Leonard IsenbergWhile class sizes are too large at LAUSD, which is problematic to say the least, this is not the biggest factor as to what makes it impossible for teachers to be effective. Rather it is the fact that the vast majority of these students have been passed through their prior grade-levels- social promotion- without ever mastering the prior grade-level standards that would have allowed them to be effectively engaged by their teachers in subsequent grade-levels.

It is impossible for a teacher at any grade-level to be effective, if the vast majority of their classes are at widely divergent grade-levels, far below the grade-level they have been arbitrarily put in based exclusive on the student's age and not their objective academic level. With the vast majority of students at these unprepared levels, what common lesson could their teacher possibly give that would be engaging to the majority of their classes?

And any teacher suffering under this ill-advised system of social promotion will tell you that there is always a hard core of students who would rather disrupt the class than be humiliated by lessons that they could not possibly understand, since they never learned. Chronic unreported truancy in clear violation of many of California's Education Codes only exacerbates this situation.

Add to this the fact that administrators' sole concern, under constant pressure from the District, is collecting Average Daily Attendance money from the State for in-seat attendance, while giving their teachers no support for student discipline, and you have an LAUSD school system that cannot possibly educate the vast majority of its students or allow its teachers to keep their sanity. Is there any wonder, under these circumstances, that 50% of teachers quit within 3 years after they are hired.

While finally addressing and rectifying this present LAUSD entrenched system of programmed and predictable academic failure would initially be more expensive, success in a relatively short period of time would stop turning students loose from LAUSD unprepared and predictable targets for a prison industrial complex, where it is clearly more expensive to have these "students" in jail or prison for the rest of their lives than as educated and productive working taxpayers.

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UTLA'S STRIKE WILL PRIVATIZE EDUCATION AT LAUSDtag:www.perdaily.com,2019://1.9822019-01-12T17:19:34Z2019-02-07T09:27:08ZI can't think of a better way of accelerating the corporate takeover and privatization of public education with corporate run charter schools than UTLA going on strike at this time. This is not to say that the issues UTLA has raised leading up to the strike are not valid, but going on strike at this ttime without a clear and mandatory prerequisite of organizing LAUSD parents to support the strike by keeping their children out of LAUSD schools has not been put in place.Leonard IsenbergI can't think of a better way of accelerating the corporate takeover and privatization of public education with corporate run charter schools than UTLA going on strike at this time. This is not to say that the issues UTLA has raised leading up to the strike are not valid, but going on strike at this ttime without a clear and mandatory prerequisite of organizing LAUSD parents to support the strike by keeping their children out of LAUSD schools has not been put in place.

This could have easily been accomplished by giving these LAUSD parents a safe and easilty organized viable alternative as to where they could send their children outside LAUSD schools to "alternative classes" organized by UTLA, using retired teachers, in churches and other private venues.

And of course, if this was done and these students didn't show up at an LAUSD campuses during the strike, LAUSD would not be able to collect Average Daily Attendance (ADA) money from the State and federal governments, which would put financial pressure on LAUSD administration to quickly settle the strike by giving UTLA and its teachers what they have been most reasonably demanding.

Under these circumstances, charters now pose a real and viable alternative for LAUSD parents as to where they can send their children, if they don't want their children sitting in regular LAUSD classrooms run by administrators and non-teachers, more than willing to cross UTLA's picket line.

So why would UTLA's President Alex Caputo-Pearl and the rest of the leadership at UTLA take its teacher rank and file out on strike under these circumstances and without organizing LAUSD parents by giving them a safe and continuing education of their children alternative? The answer is both simple and sad.

One need only go back to the period which then Superintendent John Deasy gave Caputo-Pearl and the 7 out-of-classroom candidates for becoming officers at UTLA release time during school hours to run for office. This put in a leadership at UTLA that is and has been in the pocket of the District ever since.

Most of the leadership at UTLA are ex-LAUSD employees that are already fully vested in State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) or other benefits. In addition- and most telling- they are now employees of UTLA and not LAUSD with a benefits package that they are already vested in whether or not this strike ultimately destroys the union. And one must wonder just what silver parachutes Caputo-Pearl and the others have in place in the event of the final demise of UTLA due to this strike?

For the last 40 years, corporate profit motivate interests have very carefully laid the groundwork for the destruction of public education with a system that puts corporate profit over what should be the only raison d'etre of public education, which should be the educational formation of America's future citizens to a point where they are intellectually literate enough to understand what is going on in this country in the context of history- something that is on the verge of being totally eradicated in yet segregated and measurably inferior public education at LAUSD and elsewhere in this country.

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UTLA STRIKING LAUSD INTO BANKRUPTCY- AND FUNDAMENTAL POSITIVE CHANGE?tag:www.perdaily.com,2019://1.9812019-01-10T05:30:29Z2019-01-12T04:16:54ZOur longstanding failed model of yet segregated non-education at LAUSD needs to come to an end and the looming strike by UTLA teachers might just be the best and most efficient way to accomplish this.Leonard IsenbergOur longstanding failed model of yet segregated non-education at LAUSD needs to come to an end and the looming strike by UTLA teachers might just be the best and most efficient way to accomplish this. In the past, the biggest question that loomed over every strike was just how long teachers or other strikers could hold out- without pay and benefits- before they would have had to compromise, give in, and settle?

What is different now is that long financially mismanaged LAUSD is already on the verge of bankruptcy, because of generations of fiscal mismanagement by their corporate controlled administrators, who over the years have become more and more captives of corporate vendors of goods and services sold at obscenely exorbitant and unnecessarily inflated prices on contracts for goods and services rife with conflicts of interest.

So what's different in an LAUSD-UTLA strike today is that it is not just teachers that are under financial pressure to settle a strike, but also an already almost bankrupt LAUSD.

A strike by UTLA with the support of their students' parents and an interim daycare program run by retired LAUSD teachers, to address parents major concern as to the safety of their children during a strike, would give these parents a safe place to send their children, while also cutting off Average Daily Attendance monies paid by the State for actual in-seat-student attendance to an LAUSD already teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. This might just be what is necessary to force LAUSD into bankruptcy, where a reorganization of the district might finally take place that would give power to educators, parents, and students and not the present corporate LAUSD administrative stooges, whose mismanagement has continued to squander the money necessary to correctly run an LAUSD with reasonable class size, pragmatic pedogogy determined by students' actual academic level, and fairly compensated and administratively supported teachers.

The primary function of any school is to educate students. But this cannot take place in classrooms of 40 students or more where the vast majority of students are not- nor never have been- at grade-level and where the predictable disruptive behavior of these students, profoundly behind grade-level, causes constant class disruption that makes it impossible for the teacher to teach.

If you take a line from the 1976 film All The President's Men," about Watergate and the downfall of the Nixon presidency, and you "follow the money" at LAUSD, you find it goes for everything other than lowering class size, teaching students, and fairly compensating teachers, which are clearly the main factors that currently preclude LAUSD from fulfilling its primary mandate of educating the children in its charge.

Ironically, LAUSD of the 1950s and 1960s did exactly what was necessary and spent the vast majority of its budget on the classroom and its primary directive of assuring that few students were allowed to leave school without a fundamental education and the skills necessary to go on with education or a trade with which they could become productive taxpaying members of society. There were no 50% dropout rates or students leaving school without basic literacy, where a disproportionate number of these predominantly minority students would predictably wind up incarcerated.

The main factors leading to the rise in private schools, which can cost as much as $30-40 thousand a year, is that the minority of parents- predominantly White- with the means to do so, are willing to pay this amount of money to get their children away from the failure factories that LAUSD schools have become. And without the social capital of these parents in LAUSD, LAUSD has only further deteriorated in terms of maintaining academic grade-level standards.

Latino and African American students didn't start out as "inferior," but an LAUSD non-education as presently constituted makes it virtually impossible for the vast majority these predominanty minority students to fulfill their superior achieving potential. The LAUSD purposefully failed academic environment literally does nothing to allow these students to recognize and achieve their potential.

In reorganizing a morally bankrupt and soon to be financially bankrupt LAUSD, a private school model that focuses on classroom size and the teaching of critical thinking skills should be the foremost consideration. This can be accomplished where the imposition of these goals is done at the school level by parents, students, and teachers and not by an unaccountable LAUSD self-dealing administration that doesn't have a clue how to democratically implement an effective public education system at a reasonable price. And with the economics of scale, this can be accomplished for far far less than $40,000 a year per student.

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HOW UTLA CAN WIN AGAINST LAUSD WITHOUT A STRIKE?tag:www.perdaily.com,2019://1.9802019-01-07T20:39:54Z2019-01-14T02:43:42ZIf United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Alex Caputo Pearl and the other leaders of the union really want to achieve their demands for a school work place environment with reasonable class size, administrative support for discipline, fair compensation for teachers, and an end to targeting teachers for removal who seek these and other excellent education goals, they need the support of their students' parents to join them in striking/boycotting LAUSD schools, which will cut off the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funding from the State of California, based on in-seat student attendance, which regrettably is the only thing that those running LAUSD actually care about.Leonard IsenbergIf United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Alex Caputo Pearl and the other leaders of the union really want to achieve their demands for a school work place environment with reasonable class size, administrative support for discipline, fair compensation for teachers, and an end to targeting teachers for removal who seek these and other excellent education goals, they need the support of their students' parents to join them in striking/boycotting LAUSD schools, which will cut off the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funding from the State of California, based on in-seat student attendance, which regrettably is the only thing that those running LAUSD actually care about.

In an entrenched LAUSD administration that in no way cares about actually educating its predominantly minority students, LAUSD is trying to recruit enough administrators, substitutes and others willing to cross a picket line to keep schools open, so they can continue collecting money from the State and federal governments. But LAUSD and these folks will in no way be able to carry on anything that even remotely approximates a real education under these circumstances...and they don't care.

Parents are caught between a rock and a hard place, because while they want their children to be in school and educated, they necessarily are primarily concerned with a school's daycare function, which assures that their children have a place to go that is safe with adult monitored, when the parents have to go to work.

If UTLA got retired teachers to set up "classes" in local churches and other public buildings, this would offer the students' parents a safe and viable alternative to sending their students to LAUSD schools, which clearly have and will continue to make no attempt to really educate these predominantly minority students, who would continue to be marginalized in our society.

Step one is for UTLA to call local news media to make them aware of this alternative to sending their kids to LAUSD schools. Step two is to contact and their retired teachers and make parents aware that they have a viable alternative for their childrens' education and safety that allows them to support their childrens' teachers' more than reasonable demands for a real public education system that is more concerned with pragmatically educating all students at their individual subjective levels than just collecting money for the benefit of an entrenched LAUSD bureaucracy that is more concerned with its inflated vendors profits.

If successful, this might just be the first step toward a decentralized LAUSD public education system, where parents and teachers run each local school and hire administrators who remain in their jobs only so long as the students do well, while staying up with or even surpassing their actual grade-levels standards of student achievement.

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MAKING GLOBAL WARMING REAL ENOUGH TO STOP ITtag:www.perdaily.com,2019://1.9792019-01-04T03:36:46Z2019-01-04T03:44:51ZClearly the biggest problem in getting humans to deal with global warming in a timely manner is in making it real enough now for those with enough power and informed vision to change its dismal and unequivocal dark vision of our future, while there is still time to change things for the better.Leonard IsenbergClearly the biggest problem in getting humans to deal with global warming in a timely manner is in making it real enough now for those with enough power and informed vision to change its dismal and unequivocal dark vision of our future, while there is still time to change things for the better.

This is difficult while we still live in this relatively normal world, where the majority of bad global warming related things still happen to the minority of people on this planet and where the frequency of global changing disasters still hasn't deviated sufficiently or quickly enough to finally get humanity's attention.There's that old saw: If you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog in tepid water and slowly raise the temperature around it to boiling, it will boil to death. But of course humans are much smarter than frogs...aren't they?What I propose to accomplish this quantum leap of human consciousness raising, when it comes to global warming and its ever increasing life threatening effects, is in creating a reality today that closely approximates what places will look like on earth, once global warming goes into irreversible high gear in the next few years.As weird as it might initially seem, this could be accomplished by building a theme park or series of theme parks in various cities around the world modeled and constructed on the clear, mounting, and uncontradicted scientific evidence that already describes in great detail what various places on earth will be like in the not too distant future. Like the different lands at Disneyland, this nightmare Global Warming Theme Park could have different lands that show what well known places on earth might be like in 20 years, 50 years, or 100 years, if we continue unabated to allow the uncontrolled use of carbon based energy sources.Listen, if Richard Branson and Virgin are able to get people to pay $250,000 for several minutes in space, don't you think a whole lot more people would pay a whole lot less to travel to a future uninhabited planet called earth at a Global Warming Theme Park?So that the Global Warming Theme Park isn't too much of a downer, one final land in the theme park might show just what earth could look like, if we ever decided to pragmatically put humanity's future before short term corporate profit that still doesn't take into consideration the real cost of what we presently produce and consume from neutral in nature to neutral in nature, which should be required by law.If we could build an atomic bomb with 1940s technology, does anybody really doubt that we could relatively easily address global warming with the extraordinary scientific knowledge we already have today, but don't use?

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WHAT MAKES A VITAL SENIOR CITIZENtag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9752018-12-23T04:45:33Z2018-12-22T17:49:12ZRecent medical studies have shown that "Fit Seniors Can Have Hearts That Look 30 Years Younger" than one would have anticipated finding in 70 year old senior citizens. According to the study, these unexpectedly youthful seniors owe their common vitality factor to a shared lifelong engagement with sustained vigorous exercise.Leonard IsenbergRecent medical studies have shown that "Fit Seniors Can Have Hearts That Look 30 Years Younger" than one would have anticipated finding in 70 year old senior citizens. According to the study, these unexpectedly youthful seniors owe their common vitality factor to a shared lifelong engagement with sustained vigorous exercise.

This made me wonder just how much of what we think of as the normal aging process is actually being accelerated by retirement? We've all heard the expression, "Use it or lose it." Has retirement become an unnecessary self-fulfilling degradation trigger of what had been, up until retirement, a healthy and engaged mind and body? Is accelerated senior physical and mental health degradation coming about to a large extent by our continuing to conform to an outmoded 20th century and earlier notion of when human beings truly gets old?

Given unquestioned notions like 65 years of age being the age of retirement for most of us, have we become so used to our conforming to this unnatural and premature "senior citizen" status that the resulting loss of physical and mental viability that we have thought was normal is never questioned?

Last week the renown linguist and philosopher Noah Chomsky turned 90 years of age. And like a minority of the elderly who have never retired from active physical and mental engagement, Chomsky has remained as intellectually engaged and sharp today as he was when he was chronologically much younger.

When talking about subjects as varied as politics and government or global warming, Chomsky always brings the uncontravertible evidence to support his truly insightful perspectives that consistently cite year, month, and often day of the week- as if he were footnoting a postdoctoral disertation- in obliterating the specious and disengenuous arguments of his conservative opponents that ignore Chomsky and the clear unchallenged scientific evidence he cites when they deny the existence of things like global warming.

Chomsky's in depth examination with well established legal precedents always offers a context as to what has been the effect of things like the Citizens United Supreme Court case, that gave individual civil rights to a corporate legal fiction that was initially only designed to limit individual investor liability.

Given that most of Chomsky's arguments are rationally irrefutable, the mainstream corporate media chooses to simply ignore him, while continuing to marginalize him and other "senior citizens" that in the past received an in depth, critical thinking skills education, which sadly is no longer extant in our public education system or the society at larger.

The fall of every prior civilization has come about through a self-censorship of the oldest and most learned by those who refuse to learn the lessons of the present- juxtaposed with the past- which would allow us to continue evolving and surviving.

In definitively attempting to address this inexcusable and often purposeful marginalizing of the elderly, I would propose a solution that keeps this yet vital segment of our population engaged in a manner that truly benefits all of us.

Because the United States is a relatively young country, it has not maintained its public infrastucture, like a country like France does by systematically allocating much more money on a regular and timely basis to this task. So now, our roads, bridges, and other public buildings and structures have deteriorated to a point where the cost of catching up is rather daunting.

What if the idle and unnecessarily deteriorating elderly we talked about, who still want to work, were given public works jobs commensurate with their physical and mental abilities. This would free up the younger public works force to do the more challenging jobs, while bringing down costs. You might even give this elderly Civilian Construction Corp (CCC) a modest stipend, since a significant segment of the elderly population is also profoundly poor.

Or, if United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) wanted to improve its chances in striking against LAUSD in early January 2019, it could get the support of their students parents by getting retired teachers to reconstitute educated daycare classes in churches and other public buildings. LAUSD only gets Average Daily Attendance (ADA) money from the State and federal government for in-seat attendance at LAUSD schools and not when the students are gathered elsewhere. That's the kind of clever idea that only a chauvinist senior citizen has the historic memory to come up with.

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LAUSD- STILL CRAZY [SEGREGATED] AFTER ALL THESE YEARStag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9762018-12-05T23:35:35Z2018-12-05T18:33:17ZAt the beginning of the week I went to UCLA to hear African American attorney Michaela N.Turnage Young, senior counsel for the NAACP Defense and Education Fund and lead attorney in the diversity admissions case against Harvard. When I asked her why the NAACP Defense and Education Fund choose to pursue Harvard as opposed to going after the yet blatant segregation in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and other inner city public school systems, I got silence from Attorney Turnage Young.
Could it be that they didn't want to offend their corporate foundation donors by going after LAUSD et al? Or might it have actually been the greatest repudiation of racist sterotypes by showing that when push comes to shove, when anybody of whatever ethnicity gets a six-figure salary, they turn momma's picture to the wall?Leonard IsenbergProbably the greatest advantage the United States has had over most other countries up until now has been its pragmatic and ever evolving definition of what it means to be an American. This constant and dynamic redefinition by yet the latest wave of immigrants has taken its strength from incorporating the unique positive differences of these rich and diverse cultures in reinvigorating what might otherwise have become a declining and complacent American society, like all those other failed societies that have already preceded us. This strength is what I call the inherent positivity of ever evolving diversity, which remains a prerequisite for any society that desires to remain viable over time.

Negative diversity, on the other hand, is something else this country has also experienced. And there is no greater example of how negative diversity functions then in examining how African Americans have and continue to be treated in this country over the last 400 years. Like other components of this country, African Americans have made their exquisite and uniquely positive contributions in many areas. But they have done so inspite of the neverending negative social and economic treatment and stigma that is unprecedent with any other human component of this country's population.

The social institution and primary mechanism for maintaining African Americans in their place at the bottom of virtually every list of positive components of human well being defined by such things as life expectancy, health, economic success, and integration into American society is a purposefully failed and yet segregated public education system.

Under slavery, it was a crime to teach a slave to read. And after slavery ended, segregated minority schools, given the resources available to them, were unable to educate their students to their highest potential, which was and remains the unchallenged and taken for granted goal of every integrated predominantly White school.

In 1896, Plessy vs. Ferguesson established the fantasy notion of "separate but equal" education for African American, Latino, and other minorities in segregated schools. It has only taken us 58 years, until 1954 and the Brown vs. Board of Education case, for the Supreme Court to finally take cognizance of what had always been the glaring reality that, "Separate but equal...is [was and always will be] inherently unequal." A belated end of story? Not by a long shot. We are now 64 years after the Brown case and our schools are more segregated now than they were before the Brown decision.

So you would think that this might be of interest to an organization like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund? Nope, they're too busy going after Harvard for alleged lack of diversity in their admissions policy, that at best has de minimis result when determining how many African Americans get to be one of the 1600 new students a year Harvard takes as incoming freshman. Is this more important to the NAACP than the millions of Blacks and Latinos trapped in substandard still de facto segregated public schools, where literally no attempt is made to educate them to their potential in a timely manner?

At the beginning of the week I went to UCLA to hear African American attorney Michaela N.Turnage Young, senior counsel for the NAACP Defense and Education Fund and lead attorney in the diversity admissions case against Harvard. When I asked her why the NAACP Defense and Education Fund choose to pursue Harvard as opposed to going after the yet blatant segregation in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and other inner city public school systems, I got silence from Attorney Turnage Young.

Could it be that they didn't want to offend their corporate foundation donors by going after LAUSD et al? Or might it have actually been the greatest repudiation of racist sterotypes by showing that when push comes to shove, when anybody of whatever ethnicity gets a six-figure salary, they turn momma's picture to the wall?

If you still think as I do that these folks have their priorities screwed up, you might just get in touch with them to let them know how you feel:

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

40 Rector Street, 5th floor New York, NY 10006

And if you are really motivated, you might just go to their "Request for assistance form" and fill it out asking the NAACP to finally address our purposefully failed inner city segregated public schools that continue unabated to make African Americans 14 times more likely to be incarcerated, since the majority exit schools without the education and skills necessary to be gainfully employed productive taxpaying members of our society.

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EMERGENCY MEMO TO TARGETED TEACHERStag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9742018-11-21T19:01:57Z2018-12-06T04:50:16ZGreetings Certificated Teachers,
When you find yourself attacked by administrators in your school district, we recommend that you take immediate legal action against your employer. From the data we have collected,, (consisting of thousands of teachers, who have been unjustly targeted) we see a massive pattern and practice of age, race and gender discrimination against these thousands of teachers in the state of California and around the country.
Therefore, we strongly recommend that you exercise your rights under workers compensation laws, if your physical and/or emotional state has affected your ability to teach. We also recommend that under no circumstances do you submit to the jurisdiction of the Commission on Professional Competence/Office of Administrative Hearings.Leonard IsenbergGreetings Certificated Teachers,

When you find yourself attacked by administrators in your school district, we recommend that you take immediate legal action against your employer. From the data we have collected,, (consisting of thousands of teachers, who have been unjustly targeted) we see a massive pattern and practice of age, race and gender discrimination against these thousands of teachers in the state of California and around the country.

Therefore, we strongly recommend that you exercise your rights under workers compensation laws, if your physical and/or emotional state has affected your ability to teach. We also recommend that under no circumstances do you submit to the jurisdiction of the Commission on Professional Competence/Office of Administrative Hearings.

If you feel you have been retaliated against for exercising your union rights like the Williams Act, Whistleblower Act, or for advocacy, we strongly recommend that you immediately file an unfair labor practice charge with PERB. We also recommend that you take immediate action in Superior Court as the Ed Code offers virtually no protection or due process for teachers. To be specific the only 2 Ed Code protections for teachers are California Ed Code 44031, which is almost always violated- see California Ed code 44113, which is almost never enforced.

The tragedy and attack on educators in California is beyond comprehension, but understand that you are not alone, but rather one of thousands that have been systematically target. There are thousands of similarly situated teachers facing the same retaliation, gas lighting, forced retirement, emotional and psychological abuse, only because districts on the verge of bankruptcy see this as a way for these districts to save money.

The entire state of California from the governor, state senate, state assembly, Office of Administrative Hearings, Commission on Teacher Credentialing, UTLA, CFT, CTA, AFT, NEA, UESF, BFT, AFL-CIO, most school boards, and administration have participated in the attack on veteran teachers in the State of California. Thousands of veteran teachers have lost their homes, pensions, marriages, spouses, self esteem and livelihood due to this massively fraudulent scheme.

*This message is not intended for legal advice, nor should it be taken as legal advice*

Sincerely,

Teacher Advocates

Lenny@perdaily.com

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AN OPEN LETTER TO LAUSD'S SUPERINTENDENT BEUTNERtag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9732018-11-12T05:45:54Z2018-11-11T18:25:57ZWhen you were hired as superintendent, the fact that you didn't have an education background was deemed a deficit, but I think nothing could be further than the truth. What has been a major deficit in the past for all your predecessors has been their complete and utter lack of business and legal experience in running an LAUSD, which is in reality one of the biggest businesses in the state.
All your predecessors at LAUSD only moved up from teaching into various higher and higher echelons of LAUSD administration only if they always did exactly what they were asked to do by their superiors without questioning it- whether it made any sense or not. So now what we are left with in LAUSD administration and what you have to deal with is an entrenched administrative bureaucracy, where nobody thinks and administrators and others just rubber stamp whatever they are asked by their superiors.Leonard IsenbergDear Superintendent Beutner,

I am a whistle blower and ex-LAUSD teacher who was fired in 2010 on completely fabricated charges, even though I had well documented evidence and a prior exemplary 20 year teaching career. Why was I fired? Because I dared to report rampant fraud in both LAUSD's financial and academic functions, which continues to put the District on the verge of bankruptcy.

Although many have told me that you are merely the latest iteration of superintendent bent on moving LAUSD toward privatization for corporate vendor profit with little regard for improving LAUSD's academic achievement, I also felt that your recent excursions around LAUSD, where you have gone into offices and asked employees what they were actually doing on a day-to-day basis, gave me at least a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, your business, philanthrophist, and teacher mother experiences might mean that for the first time at LAUSD, you have the pragmatic good business skills necessary to finally address and fix an LAUSD that 40 years ago was actually better able to educate all its students and did so at a fraction of the cost to our society. And of course these unnecessary costs should now include the deferred costs of a criminal justice system that presently has to clean up the purposeful academic mess entrenched LAUSD bureaucrats create by falsifying grades, assessments, and attendance, which leaves LAUSD ex-students on the street with no way or education to be productive working members of our society- next stop jail?

When you were hired as superintendent, the fact that you didn't have an education background was deemed a deficit, but I think nothing could be further from the truth. What has been a major deficit in the past for all your predecessors has been their complete and utter lack of business and legal experience in running an LAUSD, which is- in the final analysis- reality one of the biggest businesses in the state, irrespective of its non-profit status.

Presently, all your predecessors at LAUSD have done is move up from teaching into various higher and higher echelons of LAUSD administration, but only if they always do what they are asked to do by their superiors without questioning it; whether it makes any sense or not. So now what we are left within LAUSD administration and what you have to deal with is an entrenched administrative bureaucracy, where nobody thinks and administrators and others just rubber stamp whatever they are asked to by their superiors.

While this is pervasive throughout the District and directly responsible for the dire financial and academic straits LAUSD presently finds itself in, it is not a phenomenon at just the lower levels of the District, but also permeates a captive Board.

Just one example to show you just how high this dysfunction goes can be seen by looking at the career of your interim LAUSD superintendent predecessor Vivian Ekchian, whose success at LAUSD is directly attributable to her willingness to sign any document placed before here, whether or not she had any actual knowledge as to the facts involved.

So, you have a choice. You can either depend on LAUSD's entrenched and self-serving bureaucracy for the information necessary to finally address and fix LAUSD definitively or you can ask me and all the other credible people who will never ask you to believe anything they cannot give you detailed evidence and other proof to substantiate. Alas, most of these folks have already been targeted and removed from the District for having dared to challenge LAUSD party line, but a bright guy like you should have no trouble determining as to who you think is telling you the truth. And as for me, I would be happy to tell you what I know for free with no conflict of interest, given that I am no longer an LAUSD employee, since 2010, when I was fired.

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STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS? WHY WAIT 8 YRS. TO LIFT MY CREDENTIAL?tag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9722018-11-03T04:38:48Z2018-11-03T03:10:28Z8 years after being summarily fired on completely fabricated charges by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)- charges that really have more to do with how much money LAUSD continues to save by disproportionately targeting and removing more expensive high seniority teachers- the California Commission On Teacher Credentialing (CTC), after renewing my credential in 2012 and 2017 has finally gotten around to moving definitively to lift all my teaching credentials.Leonard Isenberg

8 years after being summarily fired on completely fabricated charges by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)- charges that really have more to do with how much money LAUSD continues to save by disproportionately targeting and removing more expensive high seniority teachers- the California Commission On Teacher Credentialing (CTC), after renewing my credential in 2012 and 2017 has finally gotten around to moving definitively to lift all my teaching credentials.

The fact that the statute of limitations in this matter- and hundreds of others like it- ran years ago, making such an action no longer legally viable, seems to be lost not only on CTC, but also on the California State Attorney General's Office (AG), that is functioning as the CTC's attorneys in bring this action against me in what appears to be a clear conflict of interest for an AG's office that is supposed to independently function as California's chief law enforcement and oversight entity for agencies within the state like CTC and LAUSD.

I was wrongfully terminated by LAUSD in November 2010, but nonetheless renewed my teaching credential in 2012 and 2017 with no timely objection at that time from CTC, even though I disclosed on my renewal applications both times that I had been fired in 2010 by LAUSD.

It is also worth mentioning that LAUSD's superintendent was also legally obligated in 2010 to report the charges against me and subsequent termination to CTC within 30 days, which he did not do. It is also worth mentioning that CTC nonetheless contacted me years ago with threats to lift my credential, but took no timely action within the statute of limitations to do so. Rather, CTC turned my case over to the AG's office, which was then under Kamala Harris, who also did nothing to timely proceed against me before the statute of limitations ran.

All this is being done because of my "crimes" in reporting the fixing of grades and the falsification of attendance and the continued social promotion and graduation of students with diplomas, who remain objectively unqualified by any academic measure. Recently in response to the Offfice of Administrative Hearings (OAH) rubber stamping the CTC's present move to revoke my teaching credentials by refusing to address my claim that such OAH action was barred by the statute of limitations.

Recently, I filed a writ of mandate in Superior Court in Los Angeles, case # 18STCP02549 assigned to Judge Chalfant to compell the CTC to stop trying to lift my credential, when the statute of limitations has already run.

This week I filed a second case for my friend and fellow targeted senior teacher Francisco Arellano, who spent 3 1/2 years in Teacher Jail, and who CTC is also belatedly trying to lift his credential after the statute of limitations has also already run.

It occurs to me that there are hundreds of other targeted senior teachers out there that might want to also file an action for a writ of mandate in Superior Court to stop CTC from illegally lifting their credential. If you are one of those teachers, please get in touch:

Leonard.Isenberg@gmail.com

323.383.7805

In addition, we do not recommend that you leave the future of your livelihood in the hands of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). When the administration of LAUSD threatens your job with poor performance reviews and or suspension, the health effects are devastating.

Therefore we highly recommend that you file an unfair labor practice with Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), and simultaneously seek relief in Superior Court. The office of administrative hearings is a kangaroo court designed to terminate expensive veteran teachers. Therefore it is not in your interest to lend yourself to the jurisdiction of the OAH, where the result of the case has already been predetermined.

The health effects, when the employer attacks the employe are numerous and well-documented. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you enforce your medical rights in as many venues as needed. In addition, please understand that you are not alone, thousands of teachers have been attacked by the administration of LAUSD and other corrupt public school districts from coast to coast.

After analyzing the California Ed code, we surmise there only two Ed code sections that protect teachers. One is California Ed code 44031 and the other is California Ed code 44113. One deals with the disallowance of secret personnel files (see Miller vs. Chico California State Supreme Court 1979), the other deals with whistleblowing.

The rest of the Ed Code is designed and intended to promote arbitrary discipline with no objective justification or proof. These relevant Ed Code section include California education codes 44660 through 44664, 44938, 44939C, 44934, 44932, 44934, and 44944.

The collective bargaining agreement cannot save you from arbitrary discipline enforced by the corrupt administration the Los Angeles Unified School District in collusion with UTLA. If your professional standing has been threatened try emailing your contact information to the contact below. In Berkeley, they've had some success turning it around and would be happy to help you. What have you got to lose?

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WHAT KIND OF WOMEN SUPPORTED KAVANAUGH AND WHY?tag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9692018-10-07T15:58:20Z2018-11-05T23:36:25ZIn the early 1970's I was working in New York City, where there was a massive demonstration by women on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village confronting sexism and the social and economic inequalities and violence that women had been and...Leonard IsenbergIn the early 1970's I was working in New York City, where there was a massive demonstration by women on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village confronting sexism and the social and economic inequalities and violence that women had been and were then continually subjected to. The next day, there was an even more massive demonstration, that seemed at least three times as large, of women pushing their baby carriages that seemed to be confronting the prior women's liberation demonstration of the day before with the message, "We, the majority of women, are happy living in a society where Father Knows Best and men are the bosses and heads of their families." and we, the majority of women, liked it like that.

Now with the nomination and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, it seems clear that there is still a large number- if not majority- of women who find the women's liberation movement and things, like #metoo, hard to reconcile with their continued subservience to the yet dominant male role, that they have and continue to accept in their own lives.

Science tells us that continuing evolution- both physical and social- is necessary for any species that desires to remain viable. Regrettably, all human beings, be they male or female- find change of any sort difficult, if not impossible, even when all humanity would clearly benefit from a more pragmatic approach to the more and more complex problems mankind is still facing, now almost a half-century after the women's liberation movement of the 1970s.

While I believe the Left has correctly identified and seeks to redress the inequalities women have and continue to face in human society, it doesn't spend much time in identifying and proposing how an alternative family and societal system of tasks and organization would function in a non-sexist manner. This is to say that while taking care of the family and nuturing the children might not be exclusively woman's work, it is somebody's work that if not accomplished in a timely manner leads to things like a higher rate of divorce and children who have never obtained the necessary socialization within their families that is necessary for later achievement, because both parents were working.

Just one more pragmatic and possible remedy for such a problem, that all families face in having children, would be to allow maternity leave for both parents, so that the subjective needs and strengths of the different female and male family members would be more easily organized in a manner that is less sexist and disruptive to both the families and jobs they both have.

Whether in the 1970s or before or in the present, there still seems to be a regrettable majority of women who have been raised in a sexist society that values women more for how they look than how they think and who they are. And if you are a woman who still buys into this game and seeks fulfillment under these old male dictated rules, you find yourself threatened by women who have achieved levels of education and independence that you never even thought was possible.

The present disintegration of the family as the essential building block of a viable society will not be meaningfully addressed and solved until all functions of a positively non-sexist functioning society are considered and addressed without the present sexist filter that destroys women and their female children, who for the most part continue to be raised with a sexist model that treats males with privilege and females unequally, perpetuating something quantifiably less than how a non-sexist and pragmatically honest society could be organized in a much more efficient manner.

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BRETT KAVANAUGH- A RECALLED PRODUCT OF HIS TIMES?tag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9662018-09-26T17:56:44Z2018-09-26T16:33:45ZThe most compelling and yet ignored argument supporting that Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh had impermissibly sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford and other women is that these actions are most consistent with his uncontested male chauvinist upbringing and consequentially resulting legal beliefs against women's liberating birth control. Kavanaugh and his like-minded supporters seek to use the law to ignore and negate scientific accomplishments in birth control, because they would finally put women on an equal footing with men by giving them control over their bodies. Up until now women have literally been left throughout human history holding the [amniotic] bag for men's uncontrolled and too often violent sexual actions against them. Roe vs. Wade and birth control have methodically moved to change this.Leonard IsenbergThe most compelling and yet ignored argument supporting that Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh had impermissibly sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford and other women is that these actions are most consistent with his uncontested male chauvinist upbringing and consequentially resulting legal beliefs against women's liberating birth control. Kavanaugh and his like-minded supporters seek to use the law to ignore and negate scientific accomplishments in birth control, because they would finally put women on an equal footing with men by giving them control over their bodies. Up until now women have literally been left throughout human history holding the [amniotic] bag for men's uncontrolled and too often violent sexual actions against them. Roe vs. Wade and birth control have methodically moved to change this.

Now several generations into a myriad of birth control options and a Roe vs. Wade right to abortion, if other less intrusive methods of birth control fail, is the ability of women to finally and equally express their sexuality without having to risk conception... unless they choose to.

On the other hand, the older baby boomer in me still has problems with what has now become the all too casual and inherently dangerous nature of hook ups between millennials and the greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases that this now exposes both men and women to.

With men and women finally forced to safely collaborate in the expression of their individual sexualites, for the first time these dangers are now being faced by men and women as equals, where a new loving "us" entity- that is safe and satisfying to both partners- can now be created in an unprecedented equally shared bliss.

Finally, this truly woman's liberation #metoo movement that is finally confronting the ancient female oppresssive patriarchy, will ironically do as much for men like Kavanaugh as it does for women. While one is tempted to blindly hate the mindless injustice that men like Kavanaugh have perpetuated on women, since the beginning of recorded history and before, one should also take notice that the Kavanaughs of the world have likely never enoyed the truly unequaled sexual and emotional bliss that comes from two equal partners safely coming together in the expression of an ultimate openness that cannot really be expressed in any other effective manner- except among equals. Who knows, this might just finally put a smile on Mrs. Kavanaugh's face.

Yes, it's not just the men and boys that have seen their sexual and emotional potential limited by a fear of sharing who they really know they are, but also young girls and women, who have continued to spend far too much energy creating a physical image of who they think they need to look like in order to attract Mr. Right, instead of nurturing there truly exquisite personal uniqueness that in the long run will last alot longer than their looks.

There's a line from an old Jimmy Stewart movie that I think sums up what I'm trying to say. A young man comes to see Stewart to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage, which was the custom at the time. The young man says, "Sir, I love your daughter." To which Stewart replies, "I don't care if you love her...do you like her?

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KPFK RENAISSANCE tag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9672018-09-25T21:06:53Z2018-09-25T21:50:10ZIn taking cognizance of the present state of purposefully suppressed news reporting of anything that even remotely resembles the truth in a yet corporate dominated commercial and non-commercial media, it is incumbent upon one to pose a viable media alternative,...Leonard IsenbergIn taking cognizance of the present state of purposefully suppressed news reporting of anything that even remotely resembles the truth in a yet corporate dominated commercial and non-commercial media, it is incumbent upon one to pose a viable media alternative, that if structured correctly, might once and for all give the public enough real information that it needs to function as an empowered citizenry with the ultimate say as to how we want our society and country to act on any given issue in this putative democracy.

Pacifica station KPFK is one of 5 Pacifica stations around the country with the most powerful signal in the greater Los Angeles area. And yet, even though it is a station that broadcasts in both Spanish and English, it has never realized its potential to reach either of these listener markets, because its hardline theoretical Marxist orientation finds it difficult to get down to the nitty gritty real issues that continue to profoundly effect its potential audience that regrettably remains unable to find these political, economic, and social concerns addressed by any public media station or publication in Greater Los Angeles.

What is now going on at KPFK and the other 4 Pacifica stations around the country is they are finally trying to address this issue by reconstituting their programming to more adequately reflect the interests and concerns of a majority of what could be a massive listening demographic with no place to presently hear someone meaningfully addressing the concerns of their daily lives.

If you want to be a part of this process, you need to get involved before October 1, 2018 to have a say in making Pacifica and its 5 stations carve out a unique space where something approximating truth is spoken on a daily basis.

To find out how you can become a part of this renaissance of real news in the United States, go to: www.candidateslate.org

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INVENTING THE NEWS tag:www.perdaily.com,2018://1.9652018-09-22T21:50:28Z2018-09-22T15:35:57ZCorporations and their foundations have arrived at a point in this country where they have outright final say over virtually all the content of commercial and non-commercial media. Especially when it comes to reporting- or not reporting- what has come to be called the fake news. No, it might not be what The Donald calls fake news, but it's fake nonetheless.Leonard IsenbergCorporations and their foundations have arrived at a point in this country where they have outright final say over virtually all the content of commercial and non-commercial media. Especially when it comes to reporting- or not reporting- what has come to be called the fake news. No, it might not be what The Donald calls fake news, but it's fake nonetheless.

This has taken the once cherished 1st Amendment freedom of the press to a place that might fairly be expressed by a variation on the old saw: If a tree falls in the forest... and we don't hear, see, or report it... did the tree actually fall... or even exist?" If your answer is still, "Yes, of course it exists!" Then the folks at your local news stations, who continue to engage in the conscious censorship of all relevant facts necessary to honestly fulfill their much touted mandate of "public service journalism reporting" might then ask you- while smirking- Prove it! And given the now pervasive open suppression of most all that is objectively newsworthy, you would then be hard pressed to do so.

Just one- or maybe two- illustrations of this notion: Is it just a coincidence that both Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times and Kyle Stokes of local NPR affiliate KPPC both report virtually the same article and interview with new LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner, where they both swallow hook, line, and sinker his obviously false LAUSD party line that what is wrong at LAUSD is just some bad teachers that are "hard to get rid of." Reality? Nothing could be further from the truth, and both Blume and Stokes know it, but they don't want to lose their jobs by telling the truth. So they go along with Beutner's blaming LAUSD's bad and purposefully failed public education system on teachers, who are supposedly hard to get rid of. This is about as far from the truth and reality as you can get. And again, both Blume and Stokes know it.

And yet, neither Blume, Stokes nor any other corporate influenced mainstream reporter from coast to coast in this country has reported that LAUSD and other districts like it around the country have already found it very easy to systematically get rid of literally thousands of more expensive, high seniority teachers, by falsely accusing them, while labeling them "bad teachers." This for the sole "crime" of being at the top of the salary scale.

Virtually all of these teachers never had a prior bad mark against them...until they were targeted. And many were even Nationally Board Certified. But these journalistically expunged facts would contradict what corporate clone LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner has been saying and what the L.A. Times Blume and KPCC's Kyle Stokes have been going along with; that it has been very difficult to get rid of these mostly high seniority and more expensive teachers.

What has made this disingenuous process even easier has been the active collusion of the teachers unions UTLA, CTA, and AFT, whose leadership has been in the pocket of these blattantly corrupt school districts for many many years now- and yet this also never sees the light of day in the media.

So how do you stop this and get back a free press that does something more than just parrot corporate exclusively-profit-motivated party line? Here's a suggestion:

In looking at the 2017 Annual Report for local NPR station KPCC, one notices that 28% of KPCC "Public Support" comes from corporations with an agenda exclusively determined by things that effect the corporation's profit- either directly or indirectly. In addition, 70% of the Public Support comes from "Individual gifts & membership." But in this case, "individual" does not mean a single person, but could mean a foundation or other disproportionately rich corporate connected "individual," whose gift is contingent on KPCC slanting their news coverage to the financial interests of these corporate, foundation, and other "individual" entities that actually make up a very small percentage of KPCC's 600,000 weekly radio audience and 900,000 online hits.

Truly individual listeners still represent enough of the contributions to KPCC that if they withheld their donations and memberships until the stories and news covered by KPCC were more complete and truthful, they would be doing something that could not continue to be ignored by the leadership at KPCC and their present de facto corporate and foundation masters. If what we do and what we say can be ignored with impunity, it is not worth doing. This concerted action- withholding dues and membership by all those real individuals, who clearly know they are not being told the news based on complete facts on any given story, would stand an excellent chance of finally turning things around and finally making their station accountable to its listeners and the truth.

I wrote the following email to KPCC Reporter Kyle Stokes and received no response.

With literally thousands of top of the salary scale teachers having been removed already on completely fabricated charges and with no UTLA union opposition, it is not difficult as you alleged on KPCC to get rid of "bad teachers," especially when LAUSD saves a combined $60,000 in salary and benefits payments, when they replace them with a 20-something fresh out of college and working on an emergency credential.If KPCC's dependence on foundation money doesn't preclude you from telling the truth, give me a call.

Leonard Isenberg

cell 323.383.7805

Skype: LennyIsenberg

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."--Thomas Jefferson

If enough of you emailed similar concerns to Mr. Stokes, maybe his handlers would finally get the message.